Neat phone, even neater keyboard

"I met up with representatives of Microsoft's mobile devices group here at DEMOfall 05 today, and one of the new phones they showed me was Sprint's PCS Vision Smart Device PPC-6700. Sprint is trumpeting this as the first phone with Windows Mobile 5.0, Microsoft's recent upgrade to its handheld OS. (The new version aims to be easier to use with one hand, and to deliver better round-tripping of Office documents between phone and PC, among other things--here's my colleague Denny Arar's news story about it.)" reports Harry McCracken on PC World's Techlog.

"But to me, the most interesting thing about the PPC-6700 is its keyboard. It slides out from under the phone's screen, but does so in horizontal orientation, so the keyboard is surprisingly wide. It's not the first phone with a landscape-oriented keyboard, but I was impressed by the size and feel of the keys, which resulted in some of the most comfortable typing I've ever done on a phone."